3-Point Conversion

Released today, the frantic 911 call preceding Urban Meyer’s hospital visit has shed more light on Meyer’s recent career decision and subsequent reversal. It is obvious from the call, and Urban’s initial reaction to retire, that the health problems are serious. Meyer has lived at intolerably high stress levels for most of his adult life. This is a guy that, as an assistant at Notre Dame, destroyed a film session TV with his remote after watching a lineman miss a block. The fact that he routinely has chest pains at his young age (he’s only 45) is scary. But being rushed to the hospital when your wife finds you unable to wake, lying on the floor, moments after you complained of numbness in one side of your body, is a bona fide death scare, especially for Meyer’s family.

So Urban did the right thing, he decided to leave coaching, to take it easy and spend time with the kids. He had a health scare and he wanted to spend some time at home, after taking Florida from SEC power to National power. The response was overwhelming, the pundits were out in force, and the college football universe was shocked. As Meyer and Florida AD Jeremy Foley watched, SportsCenter decided to air a one-hour special on the Urban Meyer story. The response was titanic, and far greater than anticipated. This began to hurt the program, a program already searching to replace its Defensive Coordinator, and losing (potentially) quite a few top flight NFL draft picks off the defensive side of the ball, not to mention “the greatest leader to ever play” from the offense. Meyer has recruited extremely well to Gainesville in the time that he’s been there and there is no reason to expect the underclassmen won’t perform, but if he was going to walk away from that mess less than 6 weeks from signing day it would have left the program in a tough bind.

I believe that Meyer and Foley then reconsidered their plan, and determined that Meyer would be fit to continue as head coach, but more in the role of General Manager, rather than Head Coach. Meyer would begin to play the Bobby Bowden/Joe Paterno role, closing on big recruits, calling out generally impertinent tidbits on the sidelines, and answering media inquiries while the assistant coaches handle the day-to-day coaching of the football team. It is obvious that Meyer needs to tone down his on-the-job intensity a few ratchets, but can the super-competitive Meyer ever be satisfied turning over the keys to Ferrari he built? Especially the first time he sees a game, or even a call, he didn’t like? If Florida expects this transition to go smoothly, they need to bring in a very good defensive coordinator hire, a self-motivated hard working individual who Meyer will trust with his program. The only problem is, that guy just got hired at Louisville to be their HC and he’s not coming back to Florida for anything short of the head job. Same goes for Dan Mullen, who had an excellent first season at MSU, and is putting together an impressive recruiting class.

He’s already made his run at Bud Foster from Virginia Tech, who turned him down. Look for Meyer to go after more accomplished defensive coordinators who have been in the running for HC gigs at lesser schools. Brent Venables of OU would be an ideal choice and it will be interesting to see if UF will pull out its SEC pursestrings for this hire, which, for the record must be an absolute home-run.